Saturday, April 3, 2010

BITCHES DON'T KNOW BOUT MY NAGEL

A Del Tigre Joint

Pop quiz, Hotshot:
You're locked in the Museum of Modern Art with a half ounce of pure cocaine. You realize your only option is to inhale a monster line and crank up your thinking to the point where that light bulb over your head explodes from the sheer brilliance of the escape plan you just devised. But you're surrounded by sleek modern sculpture. You can't rail off that shit, dawg! You'll have to choose a picture from the wall and lay it flat. It's risky, but it just might work. But hold on -- there are thousands of pictures.
Which do you choose?
WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE?

Answer = this one:



That's right motherfucker, you chose a Nagel. Good job! Now you can enjoy your blow in style and then MacGyver your way to freedom and beyond. Vaya con Dios, brah.

Bio and Criticism:
Patrick Nagel died in 1984 at age 38. He suffered a heart attack in his car after running a marathon for the American Heart Association. You might call that hilarious irony. I call it a tragic loss for the art world, you asshole.

Nagel had the artistic sensibility of a coked-out Lichtenstein drooling over the escort listings in a sushi bar. Although his career was defined by portraits of women who were probably named Claire or Roxy or Corvette, his style reflected a broader aesthetic unique to the 80s -- a sort of permanent detachment brought on by too much. This aesthetic resonates in the decade's pop culture, in movies like Scarface and Wall Street, books like White Noise and Less Than Zero, and major metropolitan areas like Miami. But Nagel didn't just jump on the bandwagon: he helped define the style. He created much of his work in the 70s, galvanizing this glamourous nihilism in the minds of the public, and on the fronts of beauty parlors everywhere.

But enough talk. Let's get down to art. First, some music to set the mood (I will not disgrace this blog by posting the most appropriate song -- Duran Duran's Rio, cover art by Nagel -- but I will disgrace it by posting Phil Collins):




Now let the smooth sounds wash over you as you enjoy a brief sampling of Nagel at his finest:


































Bonus!

11 comments:

Camellia sinensis said...

Instant reminder of Lamborghini Countach posters for sale at mall poster stores as a pre teen bay area suburbinite..i'm old...thx for the flashback.

Shelby Cobras said...

Makes we want to get my nails did.

Helm said...

"Nagel had the artistic sensibility of a coked-out Lichtenstein drooling over the escort listings in a sushi bar."

hah, well said. I don't enjoy Nagel's art because I get a huge 'traced over from photograph' feel to it which was/is a common thing in illustration but I can't stomach it. The end result is truly indicative of the 80's/early 90's though, cold sterile and distant, consumption society happiness is porcelain statues of women in haute couture

Manslaughter said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

SO RIGHT ON!

Manslaughter said...

Ha, Erik is the new Nagel. I'd totally do a rail off of those girl's tah-tah's.

Erik said...

Damn, good catch Cobras. But I did the My Little Pony thing BEFORE I found that picture for the Nagel post. WHOOOOAAAAAA! Universes are colliding.

Aylmer said...

I'm sure Patrick Bateman had a few of these hanging in his apartment.

Erik said...

Dude, I deleted this exact line from my rough draft:

"I've always imagined Patrick Bateman had a plastic-draped Nagel hanging in his apartment."

Again, UNIVERSES ARE COLLIDING.

Aylmer said...

Haha! Awesome!

Shelby Cobras said...

I just misread a DVD title at the video store: my mind interpreted Drunken Angel as Drunk Nagel. Get out of my head, man!